Owen Van Natta, the company's CEO since last summer, is out of a job -- and not by his own choice, according to AllThingsD.com. A source familiar with the situation confirmed to NBC Bay Area that Van Natta was fired.

Kara Swisher wrote on that blog that News Corp. digital chief Jonathan Miller fired Van Natta in a late afternoon meeting, amidst friction among the company's top executives.

Van Natta led a turnaround effort at MySpace which attempted to staunch the bleeding of its user base and improve the website's technical foundations. His strategy was to encourage "the socialization of content." That meant playing on MySpace's roots in Los Angeles's music scene and its enduring popularity with Hollywood movie studios to encourage people to interact with bands and celebrities on the site.

There may be something to the personal bit: MySpace is based in Los Angeles, but Van Natta commuted to the job from the Bay Area, where he and his family live.

Van Natta, a veteran of Facebook, had long sought to run his own Internet company. His failure to rise to the CEO spot at Facebook was a lasting source of dissatisfaction there; he was demoted to the position of chief revenue officer before he left. He briefly ran Project Playlist, a music startup based in Palo Alto, Calif., before taking the job at MySpace.

While likely to be handsomely paid under his News Corp. contract, the loss of his high-profile position will be bruising to Van Natta's ego.

There is one Internet startup that might be looking for a CEO, however.